Sashimi and Wasabi (3)
To an untrained eye, a seasoned ground game just looks like someone being whirled around and thrown about by the current. Even Bak Seol-chae, who had no experience in this sort of thing, saw only that much.
By the time he came to his senses, it was already over.
Taesu had grabbed Bak Seol-chae by the leg, spun with the motion as if his own body were a pivot, and in the next instant he was lying across Bak Seol-chae’s back, wrenching the man’s leg behind him and pinning it in place.
Held down tightly under Taesu’s armpit and both legs, there was no easy way out of that position.
Taesu didn’t give Bak Seol-chae a chance to work another of those Namsadang miracles.
“Aaaagh!”
With a dreadful sound, Bak Seol-chae’s Achilles tendon gave way.
If Gwangdaejang Jang Bung-ik, who was said to have cut off every man’s heel that crossed his path in the old days, had seen that technique, he would have recruited Taesu on the spot as a county constable. It was a heel hold of such perfect quality.
Bak Seol-chae went limp.
But then Taesu heard something strange.
Was he laughing?
Bak Seol-chae, lying there under the Malttugi mask, was giving a weak, almost sobbing laugh.
Then, suddenly, in the same voice he used while dancing a mask dance, he said, “While the eight-foot brute who uses his strength was off to take the military exam, the wife of the great house told me to come up onto the wooden floor, so Malttugi spread his crotch and got to work.”
“Is that Chinese?”
Bak Seol-chae kept giggling and coughing as if he found something deeply hilarious.
“You’re screwed, you bastard.”
Taesu snapped his head around.
There was obvious commotion near the ship’s hold.
* * *
The two masters of Sashimi and Wasabi were badly rattled.
After one huge shout and a thunderous crash from the deck, all the Joseon men who had been watching them rushed out in a panic.
Katsu Kaishu first ordered his men not to act rashly.
Even if they escaped this ship, all that waited outside was the crushing pressure of Yi Sun-sin’s spirit pressing in from every direction. They’d only end up blown apart.
An escape in the middle of foreign territory was meaningless. Better to stay put; that way, when the time came, they could at least make up a decent excuse.
Still, someone at the level of a leader had to go out and assess the situation.
So the two of them hurried out, and were even more shocked than before.
“D-did Joseon go to war?”
“Or are those Westerners?”
“Their clothes look like Joseon clothes…”
“But their faces are monstrous. They must be Westerners, no doubt.”
If the inheritors of Korea’s precious intangible cultural heritage, the performers of Okwangdae, had heard that, they would have been heartbroken. Honestly, the masks used in Japanese nō were even scarier.
But Ryoma’s impression was not far off.
It was evening now. In the black, reflected water, the glimpses of yangban masks, seonbi masks, monk masks, and leper masks looked like real monsters.
There was not the slightest room for a rational explanation that they were masking their faces to hide criminal identities.
On this coastal stretch of Gyeongsang, troupes of masked performers were everywhere in the harbor towns.
Even the navy put on little festival performances every first month of the year.
Shipowners brought in traveling entertainers for fairs and markets to boost business.
In other words, you couldn’t identify a criminal by his mask.
There was a common belief that artists had been despised throughout Joseon.
That much was true. And yet, as Heungseon-gun’s poverty shows, status and money had very little to do with each other.
In the nineteenth century, there were plenty of performers who became rich through their shows.
So there was no shortage of trainees who had come in dreaming of becoming idols.
Small figures came sprinting forward first and leapt onto the ship.
“Women?”
Katsu Kaishu, whose experience as a Japanese was longer than Ryoma’s, immediately caught on.
“No, boys!”
As the name Namsadang itself made clear, the Namsadang troupe was a women-forbidden world. There couldn’t be any women among them.
These were the apprentice boys of the troupe, called biri.
New members of the Namsadang troupe dressed as women and learned their craft from their seniors.
As for why they dressed that way, you could ask the two masters of this trade Taesu had already met—Ahn Pil-ju and Bak Seol-chae.
Heo Jeong-il, the mighty ship guardian, roared in outrage.
“What are these lowborn clown-brats doing!”
The biri did not rush Heo Jeong-il.
Instead, they hurled torches all over Taesu’s ship.
No one was foolish enough to trust the water beneath them. After all, even Cao Cao’s fleet had been floating on water at Red Cliffs.
“Put the fire out!”
The one who charged out was Cha Un-hong.
If the fire spread to silk or horsehair, they were finished. Cha Un-hong rallied the remaining merchants on board, waving wet mats and splashing them with drinking water.
One of the biri, noticing that Cha Un-hong was the one giving orders, kicked off the deck.
They weren’t trying to kill people if they could help it. They weren’t Englishmen, after all.
Their goal was to inflict serious damage on a rival merchant’s property and, through that, warn any potential competitors. So they had avoided direct combat, but Cha Un-hong’s response was too fast. At this rate, the fire attack would fail.
Cha Un-hong was small enough that he looked easy to bring down. The biri shot toward him with astonishing speed.
Cha Un-hong clenched his teeth.
Then he pulled out the item he had always carried with him ever since Yongin and Gimnyangjang.
Bang!
When the Derringer spat flame, the biri took a bullet in the leg and plunged from the deck, spraying blood.
He was going to need a little more “education” from his seniors after all.
* * *
Taesu, awakened by the gunshot, turned to Kim Sangro.
“Give me the sword.”
It was Suishinshi Masahide, which he had brought along in case it might serve as a bargaining chip—Japanese would have howled if they knew.
Taesu drew the blade.
Bak Seol-chae recited his final words with grim resolve.
“Kill me if you want. If I let a drifter like you in so obediently, I’m finished too. I had to show at least a little sincerity so my wife and children could live. But those biri aren’t the end of it. Soon the main force will come swarming in!”
Taesu did not bring the sword down on him.
“I’ll go on ahead. Drag this bastard along.”
Kim Sangro understood at once what he meant.
“Understood.”
While Kim Sangro beat Bak Seol-chae senseless and tied him up as a hostage, Taesu took Suishinshi Masahide and ran toward the ship.
* * *
Sakamoto Ryoma said cautiously, “Shouldn’t we be doing something too?”
“What are we supposed to do with bare hands?”
“Th-then should we go back down to the lower deck? It seems dangerous up here…”
Just as Bak Seol-chae had said, adult men were now charging in too, not just the apprentice boys.
Katsu Kaishu clenched his fist with visible frustration.
“Damn it. If we could drive off those strange men here, I could save face with Doki.”
Then they could turn their “Joseon reconnaissance report” into reality.
At that moment, a violent blast rang out.
Did they fire a cannon?
Thinking that, Katsu Kaishu spun around.
But it wasn’t a cannon.
It was something even more dangerous than a cannon.
Taesu was there, one foot planted on the shattered bow rail and the other on the deck.
He held out one of the apprentice boys, his mask smashed and blood streaming down his face.
The earlier blast had been the sound of that boy being slammed upside down into the ship’s rail.
The limp apprentice’s head hung in Taesu’s hand like some kind of apple. There was a bullet graze on one leg too, but it looked little worse than a scratch.
With Cha Un-hong now at his back, Taesu shouted in fluent Japanese, “Sashimi!”
Katsu Kaishu felt his pride sting simply because Taesu had recognized him and called his name.
But he didn’t have to feel that way for long.
Park Do-gae soon gave him back his pride.
Katsu stared blankly at Suishinshi Masahide, which had been thrust in front of him.
Does that man not realize that if I take hold of this sword, I’ll probably be the first one he cuts down?
Yet Park Do-gae didn’t seem to think so.
And in the next instant, Katsu found himself agreeing with him.
If Park Do-gae’s ship burned to the waterline, who would get them safely to Dongrae?
No one could smooth over the awkward situation of a Japanese black-operation agent better than Park Do-gae. That wasn’t rationalization; it was reality.
The moment they had come to Tongyeong instead of going straight to Dongrae, Katsu Kaishu had already had no choice but to help Taesu.
But saying so out loud was humiliating.
Katsu gripped his sword.
“To aid the one who saved us from drifting, out of loyalty and honor, is in perfect accord with the way of the warrior! I shall take the lead and cut down these vile attackers!”
Heo Jeong-il, who had been keeping himself calm by hiding behind Katsu Kaishu just as a royal ought to do, looked at him with sympathetic eyes.
So even this man…
Anyone who met Park Do-gae ended up like this.
If he didn’t kill you, you ended up helping him.
What was terrifying was that, like Yi Ha-eung right now, you could even come to think that this was what you wanted.
Why?
Because when you first helped Park Do-gae, you knew it had been your own choice, not coercion.
If you denied the fact that you wanted it, you would be denying yourself.
Reason was far too fragile. By this stage, reason was nothing more than a machine that fabricated “rational reasons to help Park Do-gae,” just as it did with ideology or religion.
As for Park Do-gae himself, he probably had no desire to dominate others. He simply had no desire to be dominated.
But what if everyone who tried to stand above Park Do-gae disappeared?
And by “disappear,” it didn’t necessarily mean being chopped down by an axe. Erasing someone’s existence by refusing to recognize them was equivalent.
Then wouldn’t the only people left be those equal to Park Do-gae, or those who wanted to be “dominated” by him?
That was why the one who stood alone as king became the king of all.
That was why, when one conquered oneself and returned to ritual, everyone returned to him as well—Subduing the self and returning to ritual brings all under heaven to仁 [Analects].
Park Do-gae was the king of all things precisely because he was king of no one but himself.
And that “king” had nothing in common with the ruler of Joseon.
In Yi Ha-eung’s mind, an idea that had long sat there like a green apple finally ripened.
Another king… one more?
Yi Ha-eung tried frantically to shake off that grotesque thought.
But he couldn’t.
* * *
In history, Katsu Kaishu—Yi Ha-eung’s old friend—also seemed to have no doubts about helping Park Do-gae.
Katsu pulled away the cloth wrapped around his face.
Like the market entertainer Oh Bong-gil in Ganghwa in the past, his nose had been twisted out of shape, so it must have hurt badly.
But the future “Count of the Empire,” Katsu Kaishu, could not be equal in rank to a commoner.
Unlike Oh Bong-gil, he set the nose back himself.
Crack. A chilling sound ran across his face together with the pain.
If he even let out a groan at this point, he was no warrior.
He was a man who, as a child, had his testicles bitten by a dog and still endured surgery without anesthesia while he lay dying. Ryoma was the same way, and his master too had a few obvious defects in that department.
In any case, thanks to Western medicine, he would later go on to have nine children. Perhaps that experience had been what led him down the path of Dutch studies in the first place.
In Katsu’s view, Japan’s future lay in Dutch learning.
The first step—securing a covert line to Joseon—could not fail.
As those dreadful memories flashed past like a mad movie, his nose was set back into place.
His breathing, so vital to martial arts, returned.
The last samurai here, carrying on everything of the old Jikishinkage-ryu sword tradition, raised a gale of sword wind and leapt into the Namsadang troupe.
* * *
It might have looked that way, but of course Katsu had not lost his mind.
He understood the danger of committing murder in a foreign land.
So before charging in, he picked up a mask someone had dropped and put it on.
Since cloth trailed behind the mask, it could conceal the chonmage, the mark of Japanese pirates.
And he did not kill anyone.
From the start, the Namsadang troupe had only clubs and torches in their bare hands.
Even if they all had real swords and Katsu held a blade reversed in his grip, Katsu would still win.
That was the difference in level between an expert in military strategy and weapon technique and a complete outsider.
Katsu calmly split only the skin, sending blood gushing dramatically to crush their fighting spirit, or else he battered them with the back of his blade and knocked them out.
It could not compare to Taesu’s ex-rank axe, but with an A-rank Japanese sword and A-rank technique combined, the result was similar enough. Faced with clubs being cleaved apart one after another, the Namsadang men went pale.
If you have sashimi, you can’t go without wasabi.
Sakamoto Ryoma also joined the fight.
But as expected, Ryoma’s “bloodline” just didn’t suit swords.
He used to brag in his messages to his sister that he’d stab this guy and cut down that one, but Ryoma was usually the one getting whacked by swords, not wielding them.
Ryoma quickly moved toward Cha Un-hong, who seemed to occupy a position similar to his own.
When Ryoma gestured, Cha Un-hong handed him a spare Derringer.
“Is it all right to give this to me?”
“You think they’re going to shoot us? Besides, you gave me a sword.”
Cha Un-hong glanced at the ship, which had only been scorched in a few places.
“I can see what you mean. We need to make them fight. If we want to leave a line open to Japan later, we’ll need to create a crime they can’t speak lightly about. Using guns and swords in a foreign land should be enough.”
That was the same thought Katsu Kaishu had had, and Cha Un-hong had had it too.
If those men were an unofficial channel for the shogunate, then there could be no better route into Japanese opening.
But Taesu, who had not thrown his sword for that very reason, tilted his head.
“No, you’re the one in danger.”
Cha Un-hong burst out laughing.
“When you’re here?”
“You were in danger just now.”
“Because you weren’t here.”
And with that, Cha Un-hong slipped into Taesu’s arms as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“So don’t leave my side now.”
“All right.”
At that moment, Ryoma’s last carefully aimed bullet struck the hand of the final Namsadang man, and the torch fell.
* * *
Taesu unloaded the cargo as though nothing had happened.
The storage shed was the one that had belonged to Bak Seol-chae until just a moment ago.
Even in modern times, and even with the Gyeonggang merchants, each dock had one warehouse—or several—reserved for different traders.
Since Bak Seol-chae’s group was on the receiving end of goods, the place was conveniently empty.
If you wanted to put a kind face on it, you could say Bak Seol-chae and the Han clan had accepted Taesu’s goods for him, but that was hard to claim when the line of people tied up and beaten to their knees was so obvious.
The shipowners and their agents looked unable to decide what to do.
“Why did that Bak bastard make such a ridiculous scene?”
“W-well, up until now, this was how he’d driven away drifters trying to sell their goods here at a fair price—or rather, at an expensive price…”
“That was when he won! Damn it. Do we have to step in now?”
“You try it. I’m out.”
“I’m out too.”
No consensus could be reached no matter what.
Come to think of it, if you saw that duel and still charged Taesu in the name of protecting merchant interests, you’d have to be a martyr among merchants.
“F-for now, it’s night. Let’s talk in the morning, all right? I mean, he’s not going to do anything at this hour, right?”
That compromise, as compromises so often do, was greeted with furious criticism.
“You useless little bag of worms. Morning won’t do! If we can’t settle this before morning, do you know who’s coming?”
People looked at one another.
That was right.
When the sun rose, they would begin to move.
The descendants of Won Gyun, who ruled over this land of Yi Sun-sin.
The Naval Command of the Three Provinces was coming.
Author’s Note
1. Bak Seol-chae’s lines are a summary and transformation of a scene from Okwangdae’s Dongrae-ya-ryu. As you can see, it expresses an affair during a burglary, though the full version is even more explicit.
2. Katsu Kaishu underwent surgery after the accident in this story, and it’s said that his father stood beside the operating table, brandishing a sword— not a scalpel—and threatened to kill the doctor if he failed. There’s also a story that this experience left him afraid of dogs for life.
3. In Japan, when people say military strategy, they mean weapon technique or combat technique. What Koreans call strategy as part of military science is called military tactics or military studies in Japan.